Time Travel is Pink
by Thunder Stag
Summary: A crack-fic, in which Time Travel is pink, and the Doctor is confused.


**So, remember when I said I'd post in a few weeks and have a schedule then? Funny joke, right? Yeah, life happened and it's been nearly a year since I posted. That's kinda stupid. What is actually no less stupid is this fic, but I hope you enjoy it. The Flash belongs to DC Comics, and Doctor Who belongs to Great Britain or something. Not me, in any case. Enjoy!**

 **_-0-_**

Reality is big.

Actually, to use the proper scientific terminology, it's f***ing massive, and those who have been privileged enough to see more than their home planet and the limited view of the stars offered from its surface are generally in agreement. More than that, it is _old_. The first space-faring technology capable of taking humans into space was successfully used in 1961, and it has generally been agreed that they were far from the first and nowhere near the last of the many species that inhabit the universe to achieve space flight.

Of course, space plays a fairly small role in this tale; more important is the fact that reality is splintered and multi-layered, including both innumerable dimensions and infinite universes. As may be obvious, anything is possible in these many universes, including the idea that in one, somewhere, somehow, you are Batman. Or, for that matter, the Flash, on whom we must now focus.

Notably, all of space is linked only to one _time_. This will prove important.

The Flash is the fastest man alive. Everybody knows that; he's proved it so many times and in so many ways that even the most heartfelt of doubters no longer remains so. Fewer people know that he has, under immense stress and with a great deal of pain, successfully traveled in time itself, a largely mysterious substance. After his initial, painful and somewhat humiliating experience, the Flash came upon the idea of a device, built to very precise specifications, which would allow him to stay in one physical location for long enough to vibrate his entire body to the speed necessary to achieve relativity and move through time. Such a device, for lack of a better term, was the Cosmic Treadmill.

Now, being that the universe is huge and strange and a little bit alive (or a lot, if you thought about it), there was an alternate version of the Flash out there somewhere. He thought that running through history on a treadmill that was normal aside from being somewhat sturdier than most models, and was thus a little ridiculous, was stupid. He was, unfortunately, largely unsuccessful in coming up with a less-stupid version, as there really isn't a device that allows such things without looking ridiculous, but he persisted anyway, and eventually came up with a version he liked much better: The Cosmic Sphere.

Some twelve inches taller than the Flash himself (to allow him to comfortably fit in the confines), the device featured two spheres, one slightly smaller than the other, which allowed the inner to rotate without affecting the outer. It also included a control panel, for choosing the year to which he wanted to travel; a meter that told him when he was moving at the correct frequency; and a cup holder (which nearly gave Victorian England the miracle of alcoholic Coke on one occasion as a popular bar drink, but that was fixed). The unfortunate side to _his_ design, of course, was that it looked like nothing so much as a giant hamster ball, and a wide variety of people told him so. One suggested he add a chair (not being aware of how, exactly, it worked), but the Flash largely ignored this.

Now, in the fine tradition of Central City, where gritty and sobering crime was somewhat less common than in, say, Gotham or Bludhaven, the Cosmic Sphere was stolen more than once. It was returned in a variety of ways – one time, Batman found it in Gotham; another, Superman discovered that it was on the moon; a third, Wonder Woman found it quite stuck in a horse stall on the Amazon island of Themyscera. Once it was even returned to the Flash by a pair of luckless teenagers who had been unable to activate it, locked the gyroscope on accident, and had no choice but to wheel it back to the Flash Museum by walking in it, hopping over the equipment whenever it rolled around and apparently at the end of their patience. Flash was so amused that he only sent them off with a warning, and it was they that later patented a popular personal leisure vehicle that was essentially the Cosmic Sphere with a motor designed to roll it around where you wanted it to go. It even had a chair.

During an encounter with one of the Flash's truly dangerous enemies, the infamous Professor Zoom, the Sphere was hit by a blast of the futuristic ray beam that he was trying to use on his foe. This blasted the sphere unharmed (it could take serious punishment from assault weapons before it cracked) through a wall of the Flash Museum and straight into a prank of the Trickster, who was planning quite foolishly to use about three hundred gallons of pink glue (which he bought wholesale from a separate scheme of the Joker's, being the only member of the Central City Rogues foolish or brave enough to deal with the Clown Prince of Crime) to 'gum up' traffic in downtown Central. The Cosmic Sphere hit the asphalt outside the museum with a pretty impressive crunch, bounced over a car (it had been on the third floor), and splashed into the glue. It was coated instantly in the stuff, which dried fast once it was out of its container. This had the side effect of coating and trapping the Trickster.

As happened often at the end of fights with Zoom, the madman from the 25th century fled through time, seeking to escape the Flash and regain his footing elsewhere. The Flash, wise to his tricks, followed the Cosmic Sphere through the wall and into the street in less than a second, briefly examined the issue, chiseled the sphere free and mostly round again, and rolled it onto the sidewalk. Then he climbed in (again, the speed chiseling came in handy when clearing the entrance), began to run, and entered the vortex that was time.

_-0-_

Staring at the Time Vortex from within the relative safety of his T.A.R.D.I.S. was a surprisingly relaxing pastime, the Doctor thought. One might think that the mad swirl of dancing colors and flashes of artron energy, manifesting as lightning bolts, would give you a headache. It had certainly done a number on the Master, as the Doctor found himself powerfully reminded when he watched the Time Lord die in his arms by refusing to regenerate a few months before.

But perhaps traveling in it as much as the Doctor had – basking in the eternal and yet instantaneous flow of everything, maneuvering through it and seeing everything he could – to a certain degree, blunted its effects on the Doctor. Or maybe he was just that crazy. He snorted, amused, as he was exactly that crazy, but continued staring at the storm of reality.

At the moment, the T.A.R.D.I.S. wasn't going anywhere. Most species wouldn't understand the physics of it all, but the best description of what he had done, outside of speaking fourth-dimensional Galifreyan and thinking in _fifth_ dimensional Klingon, was to weigh anchor. The net result was relative stability, with the Tardis not rocking and shaking about as it normally did. It was a welcome change, today, as the Doctor contemplated issues large and small, from the current absence of his companion Donna Noble (visiting her mum and grandad) to the concept of 2-D food, which was surprisingly tasty if you could understand the concept of eating it.

And then he saw something that made him double and triple take, before rushing into the T.A.R.D.I.S. to examine the readings. For all intents and purposes, there appeared to be a pink, human-sized _hamster ball_ slowly swimming upriver through the Time Vortex, spitting golden lightning bolts and efficiently deflecting bursts of artron energy. The Doctor put on his 3-D glasses, and then his _real_ glasses, and found himself both confused and quietly impressed. He stared at the hamster ball for a few moments, still wordless, and finally spoke his mind as eloquently as only a Time Lord viewing the Time Vortex itself could: "What?!"

 **_-0-_**

 **And there you have it! This actually sprung from a conversation with Nimbus Llewellyn. I'm not sure what it was about, but I think he was operating at around 3 in the morning, so he's got an excuse for the complete absurdity of it all. Not to mention that he didn't write or post this. Regardless, I am fully to blame. Please comment, for it is the polite thing to do. Oh, and read Nimbus's stuff, it's great. Farewell until next time!**


End file.
